Chapter 1228: Corpse Control

Chapter 1227: Corpse Control

Inside the military camp’s prison.

Jin Wutuo, who had been constantly plagued with fear, had a nightmare.

In the nightmare, all the crimes he had committed were laid bare.

Every scheme and plot, every act of treachery and betrayal—completely exposed.

A terrifying ghostly shadow toyed with him from the darkness, seeking to devour his very soul, to cast him into eternal damnation.

Jin Wutuo’s flesh-torn body trembled, cold sweat dripping from his forehead.

Suddenly, a chill wind blew past. Jin Wutuo awoke with a start, darting his eyes about in panic, gasping for breath.

After looking around for a long while and seeing nothing unusual, he finally let out a long sigh of relief.

But before that breath had settled, his eyes widened in horror.

Before him stood a towering, mountain-like black silhouette, wreathed in deathly aura—terrifying beyond words.

That figure was all too familiar, identical to the one in his nightmare.

And though he was no longer dreaming, it was as if the nightmare had descended into reality.

He remembered how, in the dream, the one he had long feared twisted his neck, tore open his chest, snapped his limbs, and devoured him alive…

Jin Wutuo’s teeth began to chatter.

“L-Lord… Shi-Gu… I…”

Before he could finish, the shadow moved.

A pair of pitch-black, icy, decayed hands gripped his neck.

Jin Wutuo instantly recognized the familiar aura of authority.

It was his great general—the master he once served.

But this aura was colder than ever, crueler than ever. The corpse-like grip on his neck shattered his sanity, making his whole body quake uncontrollably.

In the silent night, a hoarse and dreadful voice resounded:

“Why… did you betray me…”

The voice was twisted, layered with the howls of countless vengeful ghosts, yet beneath it all lingered the clear tone of a youth. Immersed in terror, Jin Wutuo did not notice that this voice pierced straight into his heart in an instant.

“No! No!”

Jin Wutuo’s voice cracked as he rasped, “I never betrayed you, Lord Shi-Gu! Not me… I wouldn’t dare!”

The ghastly voice pressed on:

“If not you… then who?”

Jin Wutuo dared not speak.

Shi-Gu’s corpse-hand tightened.

The control from the minor Spirit-Pivot Array was weak. Even “corpse-ified,” Shi-Gu’s strength was not enough to actually break Jin Wutuo’s neck. What truly crushed Jin Wutuo was the fear of Shi-Gu himself.

He could feel the coldness of the corpse, the tightening grip. Years of dread toward Shi-Gu devoured him before the corpse could.

“Bifang Tribe!” Jin Wutuo screamed. “It… it was the Bifang Tribe!”

The grip loosened slightly, allowing him to continue.

Terrified, pale-faced, Jin Wutuo stammered:

“The Bifang Tribe… offered me benefits. They told me to lure a few ‘guests’ into the tribe while you were off guard… after that, I didn’t need to do anything more… I grew uneasy, so I made an excuse to slip away for a few days. When I returned, the entire tribe had been… swallowed…”

“I… I never meant to betray you…”

Shi-Gu’s hollow, pitch-black eye sockets locked on him, rotting corpse-aura washing over him.

At the same time, another gloomy voice resounded:

“You’re lying…”

A flicker of panic crossed Jin Wutuo’s eyes.

Even in the dark, Mo Hua caught it instantly.

A blue light flashed in Mo Hua’s gaze. The same eerie Spirit-Pivot runes lit up in Shi-Gu’s eye sockets. The corpse-hand clamped harder.

“Speak!”

The image of Lord Shi-Gu tearing him apart like a “shredded chicken” surged into Jin Wutuo’s mind once more.

Unable to hide the truth any longer, trembling with terror, he stammered:

“I-it’s not just the Bifang Tribe… I wouldn’t dare on their orders alone… It… it was the Bifang Tribe who gave me… the Great Chieftain’s secret command… told me to harm you…”

Mo Hua’s pupils shrank, his voice cold as a ghost’s wail:

“The Bifang Great Chieftain?”

“N-no, not him,” Jin Wutuo stammered, “It was… the Shugu Great Chieftain…”

Mo Hua’s heart jolted, and before he could say anything more, an unusual ripple of divine sense surged from the nearby darkness, as if someone, upon suddenly hearing this news, had momentarily lost their composure.

Mo Hua’s brows twitched.

Just then, the blue glow in Shi-Gu’s corpse dimmed, spiritual power draining away.

No one else noticed, but Mo Hua—the one controlling the corpse—understood clearly.

The corpse’s mobility was at its limit.

Even with a first-grade Spirit-Pivot Absolute Formation, controlling a late third-grade powerhouse like Shi-Gu’s corpse was pushing far too hard.

His body was massive, his cultivation foundation immense. The Spirit-Pivot Array’s core simply couldn’t fuel him for long. Just a few actions had nearly exhausted its power. This “performance” could go no further.

Mo Hua’s puppet strings were about to snap.

He cast Jin Wutuo a final look. The faint blue in his eyes turned gold laced with black—condensing into a sword of murderous intent. The Divine Dread Sword.

One glance of this sword was enough.

Already broken by nightmares, terrified by Shi-Gu’s corpse, Jin Wutuo’s mind collapsed. His pupils dilated, and he fainted.

After he fell unconscious, Mo Hua guided the last traces of power in Shi-Gu’s corpse to retreat.

The mountain-like figure strode out step by step.

Mo Hua walked behind him.

At the prison gates, Mo Hua halted, gazing into the darkness.

“You heard everything.”

From the shadows emerged a figure—tall, mighty, radiating fierce might.

Shi-Gu’s younger brother—Lu-Gu, a late Golden Core general.

Lu-Gu stared silently at Mo Hua.

Mo Hua pondered, then said:

“Jin Wutuo was your brother’s subordinate. He knew your brother’s strength and dreadfulness well. Even if the Bifang Tribe offered him benefits, he wouldn’t dare betray…”

“But if it was your Shugu Tribe’s Great Chieftain personally commanding him to betray Shi-Gu… then the situation would be entirely different…”

Mo Hua slowly turned his head toward Lu-Gu.

“Shi-Gu was too strong, his power and influence too great, his merits enough to overshadow his master. Your Shugu Great Chieftain would never tolerate him.”

Lu-Gu’s face darkened, grim beyond measure.

He had considered such possibilities before, but without experiencing them firsthand, he could never believe it.

Yet this was not what weighed most heavily on him.

His gaze fell on the towering “Shi-Gu” corpse—standing like a divine demon’s thrall—his expression icy cold.

“What have you done to my brother?”

He demanded of Mo Hua.

Mo Hua was silent for a moment, then asked in return:

“Do you remember what I asked you before? I asked whether you wanted your brother cremated… and you refused.”

Lu-Gu’s expression stiffened.

Mo Hua looked straight at him.

“Since that’s the case, then fate has shifted. His ‘destiny’ has changed. I can only follow the Divine-Lord’s will… and guide your brother toward the fate that awaits him.”

Lu-Gu stood silent in the darkness, eyes brimming with suppressed killing intent, yet in the end he held it back.

Mo Hua said no more. Before Lu-Gu’s eyes, he guided Shi-Gu’s corpse away.

Lu-Gu watched his back, taking a deep breath, muttering:

“As expected… a demon who toys with men’s hearts—and even the dead…”

In Lu-Gu’s eyes, Mo Hua seemed less like a man and more like a devil.

Mo Hua returned Shi-Gu’s corpse to its coffin.

The Spirit-Pivot Array’s power was spent, and Shi-Gu’s body needed time to be nurtured—to gradually merge with the array and fully become one.

The mountain-like corpse lay down within the massive coffin. Mo Hua sealed it again and layered more formations around it, to prevent disturbance.

Shi-Gu slumbered once more.

Meanwhile, Jin Wutuo’s mouth had been pried open, spilling secrets unknown to others.

Mo Hua did not kill him, choosing instead to keep him imprisoned.

The next task was to attack the oasis.

While Mo Hua was using the Spirit-Pivot Array to control Shi-Gu’s corpse, Dan-Zhu and Chi Feng had already been preparing.

The delay had been for two reasons: Jin Wutuo had not yet been captured, and there were innocent cultivators within the oasis.

But now, Jin Wutuo had been caught.

And strangely, whatever had happened in the oasis, all the barbarians and cultivators who had sought refuge there had suddenly vanished.

What was worse—the supplies for the barbarian soldiers were nearly depleted.

Attacking the oasis was now inevitable.

The overall battle plan had already been discussed among Lu-Gu, Dan-Zhu, and Chi-Feng.

Mo Hua reviewed it, ran a quick derivation, and seeing no flaws in cause and effect, nodded his approval.

At dawn the next day, the battle for the oasis officially began.

Lu-Gu, as a late Golden Core general, led the charge with his Demon-Slaying Bone Blade in hand.

The other Golden Cores, along with more than six thousand barbarian soldiers, surged in behind him.

Yellow sand filled the sky, The clamor of battle shook the desert.

After half a day of bloody combat, by dusk, the oasis that had been guarded by a mysterious faction was finally taken.

The late Golden Core elder in black-green robes, after hundreds of exchanges, was defeated by Lu-Gu and forced to flee for his life.

The other Golden Cores were no match for Chi-Feng and Dan-Zhu; some fled, others perished.

As for the over one thousand Foundation Establishment cultivators guarding the oasis, before Mo Hua’s Abyssal-Bone Heavy-Armored soldiers and six thousand barbarian troops, they were utterly outmatched.

When the two sides clashed, the oasis guards quickly scattered.

They were “guards,” not true death-fighting barbarian soldiers. Against ordinary cultivators, they might have seemed strong, but compared to battle-hardened warriors, they were weak—especially given their overwhelming disadvantage in numbers.

Defeated, they chose not to fight to the death, but withdrew in scattered retreat.

Chi-Feng led some men in pursuit for a while, but did not chase too far.

It took additional effort to clean up the battlefield.

By sunset, the oasis was completely seized by Mo Hua’s forces.

During the battle, Mo Hua had only watched from afar.

Now that it was over, he led the team in looting.

His abilities had to be used where they mattered most.

War could be left to others.

But pillaging—that technical craft—was something Mo Hua had to personally oversee.

His profound, subtle, twenty-three patterned Dao-Transformed divine sense swept out. Countless hidden mechanisms, secret doors, concealed chambers—all were revealed in an instant.

“Bring some men, follow me.”

Mo Hua took the lead, accompanied by Ba-Shan and Ba-Chuan, two Golden Core elders responsible for internal affairs. They began a full, no-corner-unturned “carpet search” of the oasis.

Every door and window was pried open. Every false wall smashed apart.

Every secret passage exposed. Every piece of wealth confiscated.

Like a locust swarm sweeping the land, Mo Hua gnawed through the oasis, reaping a massive harvest.

Of course, much of the treasure had been taken away by the oasis leaders.

But the amount left behind was still considerable.

Partly because there was simply too much to move in a rush.

And partly because they never imagined anyone would loot with such grave-digging thoroughness, leaving even the items hidden in intricate secret mechanisms to fall into Mo Hua’s hands.

Gathering everything together, Mo Hua scanned through and noticed several issues.

First, in the storehouses and hidden passages, he found tribal totems.

They depicted a dark green-black ferocious bird.

This suggested that the oasis was likely a secret stronghold of the Bifang Tribe.

Combined with Jin Wutuo’s “confession,” Mo Hua inferred that the black-green robed elder who wielded poisonous miasma was likely an elder of the Bifang Tribe.

The Bifang Tribe’s involvement here ran deep.

Like the black Bifang bird itself, they hid in the shadows, doing evil, yet never revealing themselves openly.

The entire oasis was, in fact, a “slaughterhouse.”

On the surface it seemed bustling and prosperous—an oasis in the desert, a haven in the famine years, a pleasure-filled golden grotto.

But once you entered, you were destined to be butchered.

If you were wealthy, everything—food, drink, entertainment—cost an exorbitant price.

If you were beautiful, you would be targeted in secret, abducted, and used for pleasure—perhaps even forced into prostitution to earn spirit stones for others.

If you were noble, they would flatter and lure you into working for them.

And once every external value was drained, what remained was only your body—sold as a “barbarian slave” to others. This was truly “devouring people without spitting out the bones.”

In the oasis prison, Mo Hua saw countless corpses of barbarian cultivators, women tortured to death, and bodies branded with slave marks.

Even though the corpses were rotting and cold, many still showed tender, well-kept skin—proof they had once been people of wealth and comfort. The sight made Mo Hua sigh inwardly.

But what concerned him most was not the cruelty, but the supplies.

He discovered vast quantities of “Fasting Pills.” These pills were packed in uniformly crafted bottles, filling several entire warehouses.

Though not of high quality—many were defective or inferior—in a famine year, such distinctions were meaningless. They were enough to stave off hunger and save lives.

And for Mo Hua’s six thousand barbarian soldiers, they were exactly what was most desperately needed.

This massive stockpile could sustain them for a long time.

Mo Hua was delighted—though only for a moment—before he suddenly realized something very strange.

Where had these Fasting Pills come from?

In the Great Wilderness, cultivation productivity was abysmally low, pill-forging techniques were extremely backward, and food and herbs were scarce.

A small amount of Fasting Pills, that would be understandable.

But such a massive, uniform supply? How were these refined?

Which tribe could possibly refine this many Fasting Pills?

Mo Hua’s brows furrowed.

Picking up one of the bottles, he examined it carefully.

These bottles were all identical in form, seemingly made by some standardized cultivation craft assembly. Entirely white, without any marks or engraved patterns, their origin unknown.

Yet to Mo Hua’s experienced eyes, they faintly resembled something he had seen before…

Could these Fasting Pills actually be from… the Dao Court?

(End of this Chapter)